You can almost feel the polarization - thousands on one side, making art, getting dirty, and burning a man in effigy for no good reason ... and thousands on the other side, putting on suits, waving flags, and supporting a man who became president for no good reason.

If it were up to me, I would switch about half the tickets. Let the republicans learn to piss clear and the burners effect the real world for a change. Just imagine the comedy at the ticket counter. "Hey dude, there's no money needed on the playa." "I'm sorry, ma'am, you can't blow bubbles in here."

Somewhere in the Black Rock Desert there's a young republican saying, "Have you ever looked at your hand? I mean really looked?"

3. Stats from my recent adventure in dentistry. Number of temporary crowns I've gone through in four days: Two. Number of days until the permanent one is ready: Nine. Taste of the glue used to hold the temporary crown in place: Cloves.

4. Photographers are most interesting when they're not talking about photography. The same can be said of dentists and dentistry, but not of cab drivers and cab driving.

As Illustrated by Three Short Stories of Conversations with Professionals

Someone once told me that one of the signs of true intelligence is when you're able to change your mind about things. To learn from experience and grow as a person. If that's true, I think I'm becoming a fucking genius. It's only taken me 31 years to learn my mom was right about (mostly) everything.

Wired News: It's Just the 'internet' Now
"Effective with this sentence, Wired News will no longer capitalize the 'I' in internet. At the same time, Web becomes web and Net becomes net."

Say it with me now: Duh. When I was working at HotWired in 1997, and we published the Wired Style book, everyone who actually coded pages for a living already knew that it was internet, not Internet. And web, not Web. Tell me, do you capitalize radio, newspaper, or television?

As long as we're fixing long-standing idiocies, can we all just agree that its email (not, shudder, e-mail)? And drop that dotcom from the name, people, your name is Amazon, not Amazon.com. That's your URL.

Also: You visit a website, you don't log on to one (unless, yaknow, you have to for some reason). And let's all stop saying the following phrases: viral marketing, value add, and monetize.

When Heather and I got married, my uncle Harry officiated. Harry, dad's little brother, is a judge and a great guy. So Heather and I were lucky to be able to be married by family.

But here's the thing about wedding ceremonies: They suck. I mean, all of them. They're either so traditional as to be painful ("honor and obey" would have made everyone in our audience laugh out loud) or so new agey you'd hardly know a wedding was going on.

So Heather and I rolled our own. We each wrote our vows and we collaborated on the entire ceremony. As a writer, it was a challenge I'd never even considered. What would a meaningful, emotional, sincere yet irreverent wedding ceremony sound like?

A few months ago I installed a car stereo in my old Honda Civic. It plays MP3s. MP3s weren't even invented when that car was made.

I felt a sense of manly accomplishment that was, frankly, intoxicating. I, Derek Powazek, had actually removed a car stereo and installed a new one, my ass hanging out of the passenger side door, grunting and crimping all those wires in all the right places, without any bleeding or setting anything on fire or anything.

When I was done I brought Heather out and we sat in the car listening to the thing boom. The people in the hair salon watched us, leaning into their window, wondering why we were sitting in a parked car, and one of us was pumping his fist in the air.

I guess that's what made me think I had the chops to replace the hard drive in my laptop.

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Working the web since 1995, Derek Powazek is the creator of many award-winning websites, a couple of which still exist. Derek is the cofounder of JPG Magazine and the CCO of 8020 Publishing. Derek lives in San Francisco with his wife, two nutty Chihuahuas, a grumpy cat, and a house full of plants named Fred. More »